Smile

Ally Westmore hated school. She hated everything about it. She hated the crowded hallways, the long lines, the noisy lockers, and mostly she hated the classes. It wasn’t that she hated learning; she actually loved to learn and listen to the teachers in the class. It was the people. The constant staring she got from students who knew her and the constant whispers in the hallway. She hated having to walk down the hallways pretending she didn’t here them, or see them staring at her. Those who knew just stared and whispered to each other, and those who didn’t stared in curiosity and she didn’t know which was worse. She just wished they’d stop and treat her like a normal person.

She’d been dealing with it for over a year, and she just wanted it to stop already. She had begged her dad to let her be home schooled but he had declined because he wanted to her to live like a normal child, and he couldn’t understand that she was trying her hardest to do so but no one was treating her like normal person. They just stared at her, and at the scar that was across her cheek. It seemed like they were waiting for her to go off the deep in and go crazy. Even the teachers treated her differently at first. In a way, it was the teachers who made the students think it was okay to treat her like she was a nutcase. They would give her extended time on homework assignments, they excused her from tests at first, and they even let her miss classes without saying anything. They treated her like she was a piece of fragile glass that they were afraid would shatter at any second.

Ally just wished they would stop, that they would just start acting like she was normal. Sure, they were friendly and talked to her when they had to, but behind their awkward smiles and friendly words she could see the pity in their eyes, and she hated it. She didn’t want their pity, and she didn’t need it. She was fine, and she hated that they couldn’t see it. Someone had once told her that people see only what they wanted to see, and after the accident she realized that they were right. No matter how much time had passed, and how much she had healed, people still saw the scared lonely girl she had been in the hospital. The girl who wouldn’t talk to anyone because the only thing she could think of was the accident, and that she had survived but her mom had not.

They saw the girl who collapsed at her mom’s funeral when they had been lowering her casket. The next week at school people had come up to her, telling her how sorry they were for her, and she hated having to force a smile and thank them, and lie so that they’d think she was fine. They always asked her the dumbest questions about how she felt and she just wanted to scream at them. She had lost her mom in a car accident; a car accident she’d walked away from with just a deep cut on her cheek and a broken arm. How did they think she felt?

After a while people asking her how she was, and eventually stopped talking to her all together. She was weird they said. The accident had messed with her somehow. They couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t talk to them, and do the things she used to do. Ally knew they thought she had gone slightly crazy and she didn’t care. She was just glad that they stopped asking about the accident, and stopped making her relive that night because of their stupid questions. She knew that people knew to the school thought she was just a loner, and had no idea why she chose to sit away from everyone else, and she also knew they formed their own opinions on where she got the scar on her cheek, but she also knew that the others filled them in on their own versions of what happened to her.

Sometimes she couldn’t care less about what people thought about her, and other times it was all she thought about. She hated having people think she was crazy, but she also hated having to deal with their awkward smiles, and having to answer their questions about why she had changed, because she knew she had changed after the accident, but that was only expected. She’d lost her mom, and in many aspects her best friend she was going to be a little different. So she sat in the back of her Chemistry class all by herself, did the best she could on the work, and did her best not to disturb anyone.

“Hey, do you understand this,” a voice asked softly and Ally looked around to see who was talking.

Sitting right in front of her was a girl she had never noticed before. She had long bright blond hair, and big blue eyes, and she was looking right at her.

“Are you talking to me?” Ally asked.

“Yeah,” the girl said. “I’m Lacey by the way.”

“Ally, and I’ll help you, it’s pretty easy,” Ally told her.

“Thank you so much,” Lacey said with a bright smile.

Ally sat and looked at her for a second before a small smile crossed her face. It had been so long since someone had treated her like a person that she almost forgot what it was like. She felt as if she was looking at the first real smile she’d gotten in over a year, and it felt nice. It was nice to actually feel as if someone was seeing her and not her past for once, even if it was only for a few minutes of a day.